Competitive hot air ballooning is not for the faint-hearted.
It’s a sport where superior piloting and navigation skills are a must, and a fear of heights is the enemy. Nicola Scaife is a two-time world women’s champion, and preparing to compete in the world open championships.
“I think it's only one of a few sports where men and women do compete against each other," she says.
"It's not a physical sport, it's a mental sport and it's about problem solving. It is a bit indescribable.
"You're up there and you're just floating, you're literally floating in the air and everything is just so still and so peaceful.
"Of course you have the competitive nerves and anxiety and that sort of thing that most people have with any sport when they're competing but I find that as soon as I'm in the basket, and as soon as I take off it all goes."
Nicole is one of only two female commercial balloon pilots in Australia.
In competition, pilots use smaller “racing” balloons that allow them to change altitude quickly. They’re chasing different wind speeds and directions in order to complete a series of tasks.
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"I've just got back from Lithuania where I was competing at the women's world championships and competing against 41 women from 20 different countries," says Nicole.
"Competitive ballooning isn't so much a race, it's testing your skill of piloting and your skill of navigation.
"There's all different tasks that you have to achieve, one of them might be a big cross that the organisers have laid out in a paddock somewhere, so you have to fly to that cross, so you navigate to that cross and you throw a little weighted streamer down on the cross, so closest is best and everyone gets scored accordingly.
"It's pretty amazing during a competition when you have so many balloons in the air.
"Obviously when you're flying in close proximity to all those balloons it's also a little bit, you've got to have your wits about you a little bit about you as well but it's great and yeah you can yell out and say hello to someone and give them a wave and that sort of thing ... it's quite a nice camaraderie between all the pilots."
Sean Kavanagh is Australia's only balloon manufacturer and Nicola uses his balloons in competition.
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"Obviously ballooning was man's first form of flight and that was the Monconfiere brothers in France and it was basically a paper bag held down over a fire, the air heated up, balloon flew away, cooled down and fell out of the sky," he says.
"Pretty rough way to go ballooning compared to how it is now. The technical side of ballooning has certainly changed a lot. Recently computers and navigation systems have certainly made a big impact."
Nicola says she is part of a "ballooning family", with her husband's parents also involved in the community. In fact, her first competition saw her race while five months pregnant with her son Hugo.
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